Music Video Breakdown: ‘Separate Ways’ By Journey

The music video for “Separate Ways” by Journey is widely regarded as one of the worst of all-time. It was memorably mocked by Beavis & Butthead during the show’s original run on MTV, and the network later went on to rank it as the 13th worst video ever made. There is a good reason for all the scorn it received: It is awful. Awful. The whole thing looks like it was shot in 30 minutes, edited in the next 30, and then shipped off to MTV in a manilla envelope labeled simply “MUSIC VIDEO.” Needless to say, I love it dearly.

The first few times I watched it — and I have watched it many, many times — I tried to grade it on a curve. “Well, I mean, it was 1983,” I said to myself. “Music videos were just becoming a thing, and they had to work with the limited resources they had at the time.” But then I thought about that some more and realized that 1983 was also right around the time the videos for “Beat It” and “Thriller” came out, and Journey was also a big-ass deal back then. They had the juice to demand a big, elaborate concert video, or one with some sort of narrative structure, if they really wanted it. But no. They chose to hang out on a wharf and play air instruments for a while. And thank god they did.

Watch the video for yourself, then join me on the following pages for a breakdown of all its crappy pieces. This one is mess.

The video opens with the band playing air versions of their instruments over the song’s opening notes, then magically, utilizing the modern movie-making technique of “a terrible jump cut” …

… POOF their instruments appear. We are literally 10 seconds into the video and it is already one of the worst I have ever seen. Buckle in, people.

There is a girl in the video. Because there is always a girl in the video. At this point all we know about her are the following things:

She has legs

She has a white jacket

She has white shoes

She has a butt (see above)

Will we find out more about this mysterious, apparently anatomically-correct vixen? KIND OF! (But not really.)

It is important to look back at videos like this one, if for no other reason, to remember that there was a time when Journey lead singer Steve Perry was a sex symbol. He really was. With groupies and everything. I do not mean this as an attack against Mr. Perry, who for all I know is a very nice man who loves dogs and gives lots of money to charity, but when you go home for the holidays in a few weeks, you would be entirely within your rights to back your mother into a corner and demand an explanation for this. She owes it to you. She owes it to society.

Anyway, what is happening in this screenshot is that Steve Perry is doing this thing where he snaps his head toward the camera, slowly turns it away, then dramatically snaps it back again. It is great and everybody should start doing it a lot.

The vixen walks into a warehouse. Why, you ask? NOT IMPORTANT. Because it NEVER COMES UP AGAIN. Here are all of the things she does in this video: she walks up and down the wharf, she walks into the warehouse, and then she does both of those things a few more times. That is it. I am dying to know what her motivation for this was. She woke up, got dressed to the leather-clad nines, went down to the wharf, and just strutted around for a while? To impress Journey, maybe? Who was singing and playing air instruments at the wharf because … of reasons?

The whole thing would bug me for a week if I thought more than four seconds of thought went into it.

AIR KEYBOARDING OR CAT IMPRESSION: YOU DECIDE!

One of the few downsides to this video, from a breakdown perspective, it that there really isn’t all that much to it. Most of the other videos I’ve tackled had an absurdly involved plot, or multiple locations, or the bonkers hallucinations of a snakey-dancing madman. This has none of those things, and the temptation is to just take a bunch of screencaps and type “HOLY SH-T LOOK AT HOW AGGRESSIVELY AWFUL AND 80s THIS IS” over and over for 20 slides. I promise I will try to better be than that. I am a professional.

If I were going to do that, however, this would be one of those times.

JOURNEY: So, uh, what do you want us to do next?

DIRECTOR: [eating a turkey sandwich] I dunno, go stand on those pallets or something.

JOURNEY: Why?

DIRECTOR: [wiping mayonnaise off his chin with his sleeve] Babes love pallets.

Here is my favorite thing about this screencap: EVERYTHING. I want it as a poster in my living room.

DIRECTOR: [eating a bowl of pudding] Let’s glue your keyboard to the wall.

KEYBOARDIST: Why?

DIRECTOR: [licking spoon] I’m the director, aren’t I?

KEYBOARDIST: Yeah, but it doesn’t even make sense. Why would my keyboard be on the wall?

DIRECTOR: Truuuust me. It’ll all make sense when we edit it together.

[edits it together, it does not make sense]

FACT: Everyone in Journey plays their instruments hilariously. Especially the drummer. This picture really doesn’t do it justice. Go back and watch the video again. Trust me on this.

SECOND FACT: I was so delighted by the first fact that I got a little carried away and now I have five (5) screencaps saved on my computer of Journey’s drummer playing the drums. That is not something I expected to happen at any point in my life. And yet, here we are, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I like to imagine the underside of his keyboard is caked with leftover glue from the previous shot, and he is secretly FURIOUS about it, but he is too much of a trooper to let it get in the way of his performance.

Hey, look, she’s walking into the warehouse again, this time in front of Steve Perry. This seems like a good opportunity to post this paragraph from the song’s Wikipedia page, which I have read about 100 times, and continues to improve on each pass:

It was reported that on the first day of shooting, there was a cold breeze coming off of the Mississippi River, which the wharf was located next to. This made filming all the more difficult on the band and Perry, who was seen retreating to his camper on-site to keep warm. This state of affairs was complicated by the presence of Perry’s then-girlfriend, Sherrie Swafford, on the set. Not only had the band been told that they could not bring wives or girlfriends to the shoot, the other members disliked Swafford and her effect on Perry, creating considerable tension. She was reportedly extremely jealous of the model in the video, and kept demanding she be taken out of it. “There was a big kicking and screaming session”, Cain recalled later. “Sherrie was giving Steve a very bad time about that girl.” Perry had also just gotten his hair cut short, which Cain found inexplicable since the singer’s previous hairstyle had been “rockin'”.

Perry rekindled a childhood love for cattle and dairy farming, including an interest in a small bovine insemination business in California’s Central Valley.

The Internet is great.

1983, everybody.

Okay, so here is how you can tell this video was made in under an hour, as if it weren’t already obvious: While Steve Perry is backing up through these pallets and singing to the camera, he takes a quick peek backwards to make sure he doesn’t trip and fall over anything, and THEY LEFT IT IN THE VIDEO.

Everyone involved in the making of this video should be sued for malpractice.

DIRECTOR: Okay, everyone line up from most-to-least hilarious-looking.

JOURNEY: Got it.

Put this GIF in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame IMMEDIATELY.

Everyone hops back up on the pallets for one last go-round as the song begins wrapping up. I am sad this is ending. I feel like I could watch Journey fart around on a wharf for another 20-30 minutes. Easy. I bet eventually they would have run out of things to do and just started playing cards or something, and the director would have put a 40 second uninterrupted shot of it in the video. I bet the drummer would have won. He seems sneaky.

Anyway, I have good news for you. We are about to find out what the hell was going on in this damn video.
At the very end, it is revealed that…

… it was all the vixen’s dream! Wait, what? You mean to tell me that this sexy, leather-wearing babe of the 80s went to bed and dreamed about … Journey? On a wharf? Playing air instruments and standing on pallets?

She either needs to do way more or way less drugs. One or the other. Whatever she’s doing now ain’t working.

Back in my day, we wore a pallet on our belts–which was the style at the time. We couldn’t get any ash pallets, because of the borer, so all we could get were yellow oak ones. Now, in those days, the ferry from the warf cost 15 cents….

Once when on a date with a lovely young lady, this song came on the radio. I turned up the volume, slowly, so as not to seem rude. Then I reenacted this entire music video right there in the driver’s seat. Full on air-instrument assault.

There’s an 80’s-hot lady walking around what looks to be an inactive shipping facility and wandering into a darkened warehouse amidst a bunch of dudes in tight pants with pornstaches, and at one point a van drives past said lady and she disappears. I can’t be the only one that gets a really rapey vibe from this video.

Holy shit I haven’t seen that video in years and I just realized that that dock they’re on is in New Orleans — in the Bywater, specifically. I can see the Crescent City Connection off in the distance in a couple of the shots.

Most important parts of the video, for me:
1:37 – Van drives by, replacing vixen with keyboardist.
2:30 – Members singing at the side of vixen’s face; when Perry jumps into frame, back-to-back with her, she walks away?!
Seriously, those guys who just sing right next to her while she stares straight ahead KILL me. That is one of the most beautiful moments in all of music video history.

In regards to #4, Dennis Leary’s take was that Steve has the same problem he has, fucking dead from the neck up. It creeps me out to know that my aunt at some point in her life would have thrown me to the wolves if it meant that she could blow Steve Perry.

That’s not fretless: it’s a Steinberger. No head, double ball-ended strings that fitted into the nut. Steinbergers were very new and avant-garde in 1983, and damn good instruments besides–used some very cutting-edge technology (e.g., active pickups) and ideas. Of course, they’re the guitar equivalent of the Magnum, P.I. Ferrari… very cool–for the 1980s.

Danger, no “1983” excuses necessary or accepted. This was in heavy rotation when I got cable in my first scrappy apartment, and it was shit then too. We were just beginning to get used to videos (as opposed to actual live clips) and even in that primitive production environment this looks like something Gerry Todd would have been ashamed to show on SCTV.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Steve Perry. I was probably 12 or 13 in 82/83 and although I can’t remember if it was a music video or concert footage, Steve was wearing a pink and black striped ballet dancer shirt. These types of shirts became popular for “rockin” guys back then but as it was the first time I ever saw a dude wearing one, I thought to myself about Steve, “Man, that is one ugly chic.”

Can I get a request for a breakdown of my favorite music video of all time? Ronnie James Dio’s masterpiece, Holy Diver. Sit through all 80 seconds of wind in the trees to get to one of the most amazing videos you’ll ever see.

Well this was my era, at the time of this video,I couldn’t give two s..ts about how crappy and campy it might had been, but just to see that face big nose and all I thought Steve perry was a rock god, soooo god dam hot, I did not care, the close ups of Steve is all I’m paying attention is that a bannana in his pant cause I wanted to eat him alive. In 83 I was 20. Nuff said